Reporting on Colombia: Essays on Colombia’s History, Culture, Peoples, and Armed Conflict

Prolonged war has drained Colombia of its most essential resources and has created an aggressively vengeful environment of resentment and resistance. Though the second oldest democracy in the hemisphere, an effective modern nation-state has never existed. Its 200+ years of so-called democracy have been a farce given Colombia’s feudalist innards and fascist exoskeleton. Further, the continuing armed conflict is exacerbated by the country’s historical lack of hegemony, corruption, institutionalized violence, socio-political exclusion, lack of social mobility opportunities, and foreign intervention. We must curb the traditional might-makes-right conflict resolution method and the state must gain true legitimacy if Colombians are ever to manifest their potential. Julian Esteban Torres Lopez machetes through the tall weeds of Colombia’s power vacuum and fragmented sovereignty, peels the layers of the country’s flirtation with modernity and class consciousness, dissects the insecurity of Colombia’s security policies, and looks to understand who and what stand in the way of Colombia becoming the El Dorado it could become.